1. Breaking News!

Crazymeds is for sale. The domains, the wiki, the forum, everything.

My health has gone seriously sideways and I am forced to return to an urban environment (first choice: Seattle area1). Topamax has suddenly pooped-out as far as my epilepsy is concerned2. When (and if) I find another AED to get the seizures back under control, there’s no guarantee for full control of the symptoms, and tachyphylaxis (poop-out) is to be expected. As it is now it’s becoming increasingly dangerous for me to drive, cook, and deal with other stuff, so I can’t live 15 miles from a grocery store and a pharmacy, 75 miles from a shrink, and 125 miles from a neurologist with EEG equipment that works consistently.

2. Hey, How’ya Doing?

Welcome to Crazymeds, where we try to explain more about psychiatric and neurological medications than the WebMD family3 and any other site that offers “FDA-approved” information. Instead of reformatted, but otherwise word-for-word copies of the same patient information literature (PIL) and prescribing information / package inserts (PI) that often are supposed to come with your meds4, Crazymeds is where you can learn what’s good, what’s bad, what’s interesting, and what’s plain weird and funny about the medications used to treat depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, epilepsy, migraines, anxiety, neuropathic pain, or whatever psychiatric and/or neurological conditions you might have. We give you details other sites don’t, ones that are really helpful for you to work with your doctor(s) to find the right treatment options. Things like:

Anxiolytics - in English: drugs to treat anxiety and the alphabet soup of anxiety spectrum disorders like GAD, PTSD and OCD. These are mostly SSRIs like Lexapro, as well as benzodiazepines and a few specifically non-benzodiazepine anxiolytic drugs like BuSpar.

Benzodiazepines like Valium (diazepam) and Xanax (alprazolam), which are used to treat anxiety, epilepsy, sleep disorders and more.

4. The {Whatever Your Co-Pay Is} Dollar Questions

Too many of us are overwhelmed by our lives in general, and not just our medical conditions. We often get nothing more than 15-minute appointments with overworked doctors or nurse-practitioners, so we need all the help we can get. We need to talk to our prescribers about the best medication6 to treat our conditions, and not the most profitable and/or cheapest ones7. OK, in reality “best” usually translates to “least bad,” but you get the idea. We need answers to questions that we probably don’t get a chance to ask, such as:

Q Which antidepressant won’t give me a libido-ectomy?

Wellbutrin (bupropion) is not only the least likely cause that sort of problem, it can even help if your libido isn’t all that you think it’s supposed to be in the first place. But you don’t want to take it if anxiety is part of the problem. SSRIs in general, and Paxil in particular, are what you want to avoid if you’ve had problems in that area, but are the best meds to treat the depression & anxiety combination. SNRIs like Pristiq and Cymbalta can be just as bad for men, and almost as bad for women when it comes to killing libido, but really great when it comes to making depression go away. And for some women they can also help with their sexual response.

Q Aren’t there a bunch of meds that make you eat everything in sight?

Yes. Zyprexa (olanzapine), Seroquel (quetiapine), and Remeron (mirtazapine) are the worst. With Remeron you’ll want to eat anything that looks, smells, or sounds like the name for a doughnut.

5. What We’re All About

5.1 You, Our Target Demographic

Crazymeds is the site for the obsessed and depressed, the manic and the panicked, the schizophrenic and epileptic, the migraineurs and bipolar, those with GAD, SAD, OCD, PTSD, in pain or have an otherwise non-standard brain8. If you have any specific questions about a drug that wasn’t answered on its page, couldn’t find the drug you’re interested in, or want some help in figuring out which medication is the right one for you, then visit Crazy Talk: Our forum for the mentally interesting. We aren’t doctors or anything, and we don’t diagnose, but we have more experience than we ever wanted when it comes to brain cooties and the crazy meds used to treat them. We’re all about helping each other know what the drugs can and cannot do, what they are likely to do for us and to us, and work with our doctors to make the best, or least bad, choice in medication(s) as quickly as possible.

5.2 Do the Math

If you do need to take medication the math is really simple: which sucks less? Taking an imperfect medication that controls the symptoms of a condition that puts your life somewhere in the spectrum of “barely tolerable” to “dear God please kill me now;” or trying to get through life with that same condition which will keep getting worse the longer you go without treating it. A lot of these meds suck donkey dong, but you know what? When you’re mentally ill, and/or have some neurological problem like epilepsy or migraines, and you’re not taking any medications, or not taking the right medications, it sucks syphilitic donkey dong while a red-hot poker is being jammed up your ass.

You don’t think it’s that bad? That’s because you’re reading this site, which is on the Internet. Which means you have access to the resources needed to read it. Have you ever been homeless and crazy? I have. Twice. Have you ever been in the lock ward of a psychiatric hospital? I have. Before Medicare Part D-for-Defraud existed, which was also when all the meds I took were available only as brand, I ran up so much credit-card debt paying for them I had to sell my house. But I was lucky, because:

I had a house to sell. Most of the mentally interesting don’t.

I also had credit cards, as do many of my fellow bipolar types do. And we often run them to the limit. At least I didn’t buy anything stupid.9

I sold my house in 2004, so I got out of the real estate pyramid scheme before it all came crashing down on everybody.

And my experiences are nothing compared with the lives of people I saw around me. I’m a fucking poseur when it comes to the syphilitic donkey dong and red-hot poker meeting each other in my stomach. I may no longer be able to hold down a job, a relationship, or be moderately functional for wildly variable lengths of time, but I don’t live in a constant state of fear inside of a cardboard box10.
So, if you really need meds and aren’t taking them, or taking them sporadically, or if you’re taking completely inappropriate medications, then you had better get ready. Falling into the abyss happens faster than you can imagine.

And it’s no picnic if you’re taking neurological / psychiatric medications when you shouldn’t be taking any at all.

5.3 No Meds May or May Not be Good Meds

Things like mental illness, crippling neuropathy, epilepsy, and frequent, blinding migraines can’t be dealt with by gentle hugs, prayer and pretty angels, or the fad diet of the week with a basket full of overpriced supplements. Like a lot of aspects of life where you have to make a decision between two options, your only choice is to figure out which one is going to suck less.

We recognize that there are legitimate, and highly successful ways to treat serious neurological and psychiatric conditions that don’t involve medication. Lifestyle changes can do wonders for preventing migraines. Talk therapy is one of the best ways to handle depression, PTSD, and other conditions. Specific types of prescription iron supplements are all some people need for restless leg syndrome (RLS). These and other non-medication, but still non-placebo treatments, are all a lot of people need. If you think they might work for you, that’s great. Crazymeds is by and for people whose conditions respond only, or primarily to prescription medications.

These will stick around longer than most side effects. More ways to be stuck-up at Straitjacket T-shirts. All stickers $5 each. Available in packs of 10 and 50.

5.4 Invisible Illnesses Revealed!

Once upon a time these conditions were totally invisible and everyone thought we were making it up as an excuse to avoid whatever we had to do. Now they are visible, more-or-less, thanks to the MRI and scans like CT, SPECT and PET, and various flavors of EEG. Eventually there will be accurate and affordable genetic tests, although that could do as much harm as good. There are also measurable differences in the brains of people who have various conditions vs. those who have none. They are the most obvious in those with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. We’re almost at the point of being able to identify with really good certainty that someone has bipolar or schizophrenia (but usually cannot distinguish between them) based upon the physical characteristics of their brain while they’re still alive. Although there will always be people11 who think we’re faking it, or that we can simply “get over it.” If it were as simple as spraying WD-40 up our noses, wrapping our heads in duct tape instead of tinfoil, and walking it off, don’t they think we’d try that12?

To resurrect my old analogy, these are physical conditions like a broken leg. The above tests are like x-rays, although currently they are extremely expensive aren’t always worth the cost. Regardless, you get your diagnosis and your meds are your cast and crutches. If your leg is totally hosed, your meds are like a cane and the pins they need to implant, both of which you’ll probably need to have for a very long time, if not permanently. And just as you need to explain the cane you need to help you walk and the pins when you go through metal detectors or get an MRI, so too must you explain your condition and meds at certain times in your life.

We deal with the cerebral equivalent of broken legs: physical conditions, not purely psychological ones13, that are treated with physical methods: drugs, surgery, or, as much as this sounds like a quack “cure,” electromagnetism.

You don’t need to buy anything. Browse and share if you have nothing better to do.

Anything highlighted in green14 without an underline, like brain cooties and antagonist, is a glossary term. Just hover your mouse pointer over it for a short definition. Many will have links to a longer one. If it is in orange/peach and has a double underline it’s an ad. See our Advertising Policy & Revenue Sources Page for details. Click on the glossary term to follow any links to a longer definition or explanatory page. The list of defined terms, abbreviations, etc. continues to grow. Click on an ad to … who the hell knows these days. Blue is a traditional link, whatever pops up if you hover over it will tell you if it’s internal or external. Or not.

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1Seattle offers the best combination of latitude - being as far north as I am has helped a hell of a lot in lessening the frequency and intensity of seasonally-triggered mood-swings - medical infrastructure (enough psychiatrists and neurologists), ability to get the sort of food I can eat and other stuff delivered to me, and ease of getting me delivered to doctors and wherever else I need to go.

2That is the nature of the type of epilepsy I have, and has nothing to do with how effective Topamax usually is. It still works great as an add-on for my bipolar.

4If you didn't get that information with your meds, we have it. You can also get it from the drug's official website - which we link to - the U.S. National Institutes of Health's collection of patient information literature at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginformation.html , and their direct-from-the-FDA package inserts (AKA "FDA-approved information") at http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/about.cfm .At least Drugs.com, while they get a most of their content about individual drugs from the PI and PIL, also gets and presents info from other sources. Eventually put up stuff we've had since 2004, like trade names and availability outside of the US, and popular off-label uses. Like most sites they had drug ratings long before I did. They also have the best drug-whatever interaction checker since AIDSmeds took theirs off the air and generally the best pill identifier I've seen. And they go overboard with a lot of their HONcode requirements like I do. If you can't find what you're looking for here, go there.

5Note how I've emphasized the word ADULT. Crazymeds deals with adults. Other than listing a medication's pediatric approvals, warnings about not prescribing a med to kids, and reminding some people how lucky they are to not have children with specific forms of neurological or psychiatric disorders, we don't deal with children. We especially do not deal with kids on the Crazy Talk forum. Parents: you'll need to go elsewhere. I don't have the emotional stamina to help you.

7Although sometimes the latest and most profitable drug is the one you need, and it can be a fight with the insurance company to pay for it. And sometimes something old a cheap will work best for you, and not the new and shiny med your doctor suggests because the pharm rep just left a cabinet full of samples.

8Or anything else treated with the medications covered on this site, e.g. plumbing problems like IBS, ED, PE, and incontinence. If you don't know what the first three stand for it would be TMI in any event. So JFGI if you really must know.

9Unless you consider meds with slim-to-none odds of working stupid. But Mouse was quickly running out of options, and slim-to-none was better than giving up. About twenty years before that, and soon before I was diagnosed as bipolar, I bought fifty acres of undeveloped land in Australia. Take it from me, that sort of thing won't save a shaky marriage.

10OK, I would be living in constant fear of winding up in a cardboard condo if I weren't living in a house I own outright, thanks to cashing out of the real estate pyramid early. But it means I'm stuck in my fucked-up, ramshackle, glorified Unabomber shack until I have the cash to buy a new place to live. Which isn't going to happen unless I win the lotto. Which I don't play.

12Please don't try that. The combination of WD-40 and duct tape can fix a lot of things, but not brain cooties.

13Some things, like PTSD, are in a gray area. You aren't born with PTSD - in spite of what some scam artists say - but some people are much more prone to it than others. And repeated psychological trauma causes physical changes to the brain. Borderline personality disorder is another. We just don't discuss personality disorders as a primary condition on the forum for numerous reasons.

14Or whatever color "brain cooties" and "antagonist" appeared to be in the exemplar sentence. But not here, because footnotes don't count. I did not take into account red-green colorblindness when I picked green as the optimal color for the default color scheme. Anyone who is completely colorblind and spends a lot of time on teh interwebs probably has no idea how fortunate they are. Again: glossary definitions are green and not underlined, ads peachy-orange and are underlined.

All drug names are the trademarks of someone else. Look on the appropriate PI sheets or ask Google who the owners are. The way pharmaceutical companies buy each other and swap products like Monopoly™ real estate, the ownership of any trademarks may have changed without my noticing.

All rights reserved. No warranty is expressed or implied in this information. Consult one or more doctors and/or pharmacists before taking, or changing how you take any neurological and/or psychiatric medication. Your mileage may vary. What happened to us won’t necessarily happen to you. If you still have questions about a medication or condition that were not answered on any of the pages you read, please ask them on Crazy Talk: the Crazymeds Forum.
The information on Crazymeds pertains to and is intended for adults. While some information about children and adolescents is occasionally presented (e.g. US FDA approvals), pediatric-specific data such as dosages, side effects, off-label applications, etc. are rarely included in the articles on drugs or discussed on the forum. If you are looking for information regarding meds for children you’ll have to go somewhere else. Plus we are big pottymouths and talk about S-E-X a lot.Know your sources!Nobody on this site is a doctor, a therapist, or a pharmacist. We don’t portray them either here or on TV. Only doctors can diagnose and treat an illness. While it’s not as bad as it used to be, some doctors still get pissed off by patients who know too much about medications, so tread lightly when and where appropriate. Diagnosing yourself from a website is like defending yourself in court, you suddenly have a fool for a doctor. Don’t be a cyberchondriac, thinking you have every disease you see a website about, or that you’ll get every side effect from every medication1. Self-prescribing is as dangerous as buying meds from fraudulent online pharmacies that promise you medications without prescriptions.
All information on this site has been obtained from the medications’ product information / summary of product characteristic (PI/SPC) sheets and/or medication guides - which is all you get from sites like WebMD, RxList, NAMBLA NAMI, etc., the sources that are referenced throughout the site, our personal experience and the experiences family, friends, and what people have reported on various reputable sites all over teh intergoogles. As such the information presented here is not intended as a substitute for real medical advice from your real doctor, just a compliment to it. You should never, ever, replace what a real doctor tells you with something from a website on the Internet. The farthest you should ever take it is getting a second opinion from another real doctor. Educate yourself - always read the PI/SPC sheet or medication guide/patient information leaflet (PIL) that comes with your medications and never ever throw them away. OK, you can throw away duplicate copies, but keep at least one, as that’s your proof of purchase of having taken a med in case a doctor doubts your medical history. Plus they take up less space than a bottle, although keeping one inside of a pill bottle is even better.
Crazymeds is not responsible for the content of sites we provide links to. We like them, or they’re paid advertisements, or they’re something else we think you should read to help you make an informed decision about a particular med. Sometimes they’re more than one of those things. But what’s on those sites is their business, not ours.
Very little information about visitors to this site is collected or saved. From time to time I look at search terms used and which pages they bring up in an effort to make the information I present more relevant. And the country of origin, just because I’m geeky like that. That’s about it. Depending on how you feel about Schrodinger, our privacy policy should either assuage or exacerbate your paranoia.
Crazymeds is optimized for ridiculously large screens and browsers that don’t block ads. I use Firefox and Chrome, running under Windows 72. On a computer that sits on top of my desk. With a 23 inch monitor. Hey, at least you can make the text larger or smaller by clicking on the + or - buttons in the upper right hand corner. If you have Java enabled. Like 99% of the websites on the planet, Crazymeds is hosted on domain running an open source operating system with a variety of open source applications, including the software used to display what you’ve been reading. As such Crazymeds is not responsible for whatever weird shit your browser does or does not do when you read this site3.
No neurologists, psychiatrists, therapists or pharmacists were harmed in the production of this website. Use only as directed. Void where prohibited. Contains nuts. Certain restrictions may apply. All data are subject to availability. Not available on all mobile devices, in the 12 Galaxies Guiltied to a Zegnatronic Rocket Society, or in all dimensions of reality. Hail Xenu!

1 While there are plenty of books to help you with hypochondria, for some reason there’s not much in the way of websites. Then again, staying off of the Internetis a large part of curing/managing the disorder.

2 Remember kids, Microsloth operating systems are like TOS Star Trek movies with in that every other one sucks way, way more. With TOS Star Trek movies you don’t want to bother watching the odd-numbered ones. With Microsloth OS you don’t want to buy and install the even-numbered ones. Anyone who remembers ME and Vista knows what I mean.

3 Have I mentioned how open source operating systems for commercial applications is one of the dumbest ideas in the history of dumb ideas?* I don’t even need my big-ass rant any more. Heartbleed has made my case for me. And that’s just the one that got all the media attention. The very nature of an open source operating system makes security as much of an illusion of anonymity. Before you flip out too much: the domain Crazymeds is hosted on uses a version of SSL that is not affected by the Heartbleed bug. That’s one of the many reasons why I pay a lot of money and keep this site on Lunarpages.

* Yes, I know I’m using open source browsers. I also test the site using the now-defunct IE and Safari browsers. Their popularity - and superiority - killed IE and Safari, so that’s why I rely on the open source browsers. It’s like brand vs. generic meds. Sometimes the generic is better than the brand.